


The Mistake of Compassion

by Mornelithe_falconsbane



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, first solo mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:27:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/pseuds/Mornelithe_falconsbane
Summary: Sakura's on her first big mission by herself! It ends unexpectedly.





	The Mistake of Compassion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kisuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/gifts).



It’s a cold day in fall, and the sky is a deep and sullen grey. Sunny yellow leaves drift slowly toward the earth, rattling softly as the breeze stirs them. They crunch like a herd of elephants stomping on cellophane when Sakura walks over them, which ruins some of the vibe. Not all of it--air’s still crisp, ground’s still dank, colours still pretty good, definitely sufficient mushrooms--but the absence of ninja-like stealth is a downer.

It’s day three of wandering around the forest searching for clues and poisonous mushrooms, and Sakura is bored. Somewhere around here were seven people (possibly corpses) that had gone missing in the last three weeks. Sakura hasn’t even found one yet, so she’s leaning toward corpses as her theory.

The leaves crunch some more (the little bastards) as Sakura wanders toward a handy rock, thoroughly sick of her first solo mission. She sits down with a huff, sincerely hoping to be attacked, but much like the rest of this mission, she finds herself disappointed.

A crow caws above her head, and Sakura stares up at it glumly. “Crow-chan, you seen any dead people around?”

It croaks again, sounding as amused as a corvid can.

“How about black lace mushrooms? They’re black. And lacy.” She digs through her waist pouch. “I’ll give you some jerky if you help me not fail this mission--”

With one last raspy croak, it flaps its wings and flies away.

Sakura sighs and ate the jerky herself. Stupid crow.

***

The sun is halfway down the horizon when Sakura gives up on her attempt to lure something into attacking her.

Three crows are roosting in the tree above her now, all of them refusing to be lured down for jerky. They keep croaking at each other like gossiping old ladies, and she thinks--paranoid, she’s just being paranoid--that they might be laughing at her.

The light is thick like honey where it streams through the leaves, bright and golden. It shines off the crow’s feathers, reflects off their gleaming black eyes. Sakura wishes they’d take the jerky. It’s good jerky.

As she contemplates the unfairness of missions where nothing happens, she hears a sound filtered through the trees and the soft whispers of falling leaves. A muffled, rough grunt.

Sakura tilts her head, listening intently. Another rumble rolls through the forest, accompanied by a lurching vibration through the ground that felt like earth jutsu. The crows croak one last time, then take flight in a flutter of wings. Sakura tucks her hair behind her ear and tilts her head, listening intently.

The forest floor ripples, spilling toward her. She springs onto the rock she’d been lying in wait on and watches the ripples pass with wide eyes. It’s water flooding the forest, a low wave thick with yellow leaves. Water jutsu-- huge water jutsu.

Something inhuman howls in utter rage, and a pillar of flames rises above the treeline. Sakura stares, a vague sense of unease solidifying into a deeply disconcerting level of genuine worry. That isn’t good.

Carefully, quietly, she sneaks off the rock and crunches through the leaves in the opposite direction. Whatever is going down over there isn’t her mission, and nothing short of Tsunade’s orders is going to make her...

Sakura bites her lip, picturing Tsunade’s face when Sakura reports running away and leaving the clearly massive fight to the east a mystery. Imaginary Tsunade reaches for the booze and opens her mouth, and Sakura does a one-eighty, turning toward the swathe of destruction she can feel growing.

She’ll just take a peek. From a safe distance.

The best laid plans are always the first victims. She hasn’t gone a hundred meters before a blurred black shape flies past her, plowing through about six trees before crashing into a--Sakura squeaks in delight, then terror, grabbing for her air filtration mask and buckling it over her face. Black lace mushrooms!  Several hundred of which were exploding into a mushroom cloud of hallucinogenic and paralytic spores, but she can see an unharmed patch next to the body--

The person manages to stand and stumble a few feet from the pulverized pile of fungus before the poison sends him stumbling into a tree and slowly collapsing. She’s never seen him before, his hitai-ate half-melted into unrecognizability, but his face unharmed--and blue. That is kind of unusual. He is wearing some kind of robe, terribly scorched, probably size extra-extra-large because he’s huge.

Sakura stuffs her hands into latex gloves as she jogs toward the mushrooms, ignoring the ninja for now. She doesn’t have to be a chuunin to realize he is dangerous as fuck, but she knows that black lace mushrooms will knock him out--and anyone else within a kilometer, given the size of that plume--for at least half a day. She’s safe enough.

He moans like a dying thing while she snips mushrooms from the undamaged cluster beside him. Sakura hums to cover the sound up, trying desperately not to watch as his body goes tense, paralysis setting deeper. She could still hear his teeth grinding as the muscles in his jaw tightened, no matter how loud she hums.

Blood trickles from his nose, spilling down his cheeks over stripes of a deeper hue of blue. It isn’t her problem--he’s definitely a missing nin--but--

Sakura wraps the shears in a decontamination bag and sticks them into her pack, then checks over her shoulder.

The fight in the distance has gone silent, any remaining participants probably as knocked out as the poor bastard to her right.

No one’s watching. And she doesn’t have to tell Tsunade about this. Sakura calls her chakra to her palms, accidentally making eye contact with him. He blinks slowly, his eyelids twitching violently. His breathing is weakening, the paralytic in the spores sinking into his muscles.

She’s--testing herself. That’s all. She wraps a spare air filtration mask around his face, lifting his head just enough to tie the strings into place. His skin is warm--almost hot, a faint sheen of sweat leaving her palms damp. He’d just been fighting. It’s normal.

Sakura sinks her chakra into him, and searches for damage, finding far less than she thought she would. A cracked rib, a shallow stab wound to his arm, and a few ribs badly misaligned, but all of it utterly survivable had he not landed in some of the most poisonous mushrooms in all of Fire Country.

He’s still staring at her. He probably can’t move his eyes. Sakura carefully leaches the paralytic from the muscles around his lungs, staring at her hands and the green chakra rippling out from her fingers. He sucks in air harshly, and Sakura nearly jumps out of her skin.

It’s fine, he still can’t move. Sakura wipes the sweat off her forehead, still breathing too hard. This is so stupid that she’ll die of embarrassment if anyone finds out, but she still can’t imagine slitting his throat.

“Black lace mushrooms. Potent paralytic and hallucinogen,” Sakura muses out loud, speaking only to herself. “High doses are fatal, but at lower doses effects usually last about twelve hours. It’s only effective if ingested or inhaled. The spores in the air are only active for a few hours, so no need to worry about recontamination.”

Sakura seals the mushrooms in a scroll and puts it away, determinedly pretending she can’t hear the ninja’s breathing. She’ll be long gone before he can move, it’s fine . “Drink a lot of water when you can move again, it’ll help with the hangover.”

She doesn’t look at him as she trots away, her own mask still firmly in place. The spores are barely visible in the air, but still plenty potent, and will be for an hour or two. She’d read the mission briefing scroll very carefully.

She follows the path of broken trees with no thought to stealth. The woods are dead silent, whatever fight had been going down abruptly ended through the intervention of poisonous miasma.

The sunlight seems thicker now as it catches on the microscopic spores drifting through the air--like a visible, tangible thing. It’s pretty, Sakura thinks as she walks into a scorched clearing. The body in the centre grabs her attention first by virtue of being absolutely massive--it’s as big as a house.

Sakura freezes, half convinced that it’ll move if she breathes too loud. It looks barely human, its flesh rippled purple and red, extra limbs sprouting from its huge ribs and behemoth arms. A sword as tall as she was is planted in the thing’s back, a long strip of white cloth tangled around its hilt floating in the gentle breeze. It doesn’t look sharp at all--weird.

It takes nearly a minute before Sakura can tear her eyes away from the giant body. It’s not breathing and is almost certainly dead, but it’s still enormous. If the ninja who’d found the mushrooms for her had been fighting this thing, he must be really strong.

Crows are scattered around the clearing like they had fallen out of the sky--maybe they had? Sakura kneels next to one, lifting it carefully. Tiny black eyes roll around to stare at her, the rest of the crow stiff as a board. It’s breathing, barely.

It’s just practice, Sakura would swear that on her own grave. Her hands glow against the ink-black feathers as she rushes the crow’s body through breaking down the toxin. It croaks, head swiveling around as it realizes that it can move. It’s tiny eyes shine almost red in the fading light.

Sakura sets it on the ground, pleased when it rustles its feathers into order and hops a few steps away from her. “Are you a summons?” she asks. Maybe it’s greedy, but if the giant corpse in the middle of the clearing was their summoner, they might be looking for another. (She’s not looting. She hasn’t even touched the body yet.)

The crow sounds like it’s laughing at her as it flies up to her shoulder. It’s heavier than she thought it would be and nerve-wracking so close to her eyes. Tsunade could probably grow her new ones, but can she find her way home without them?

There’s only ten crows in total, Sakura counts as she heals the next one. She can probably do that many--it’ll take about half an hour at worst. She finds herself talking to the crow on her shoulder as she heals its friends, asking it questions it doesn’t answer. It’s been a long mission, and most of it had been lonely.

“The mushrooms are paralytics. Hallucinogens.” she murmurs to it as she heals the last crow, finding it far more difficult than the previous others. Nine crows are gathered in the tree above, watching her with interest.

Sakura pauses, wiping sweat from her forehead, breathing harder than she thought she should be. Something about this last crow leaves her eyes unfocused, the edges of its black feathers wavering in the fading light. It seems almost too big to fly, wings broader than she was tall, and it’s eyes--watching her like all the rest--were...odd...

She can’t put her finger on why. “This shouldn’t take so much chakra,” she says, a thread of worry lancing through her. “It’s not--why--”

The crow on her shoulder digs his claws into her collarbone and Sakura shakes her head, trying to shake away the dizziness. She just has to finish healing this last crow, and then she can rest.

She has to dig the rest of the chakra out of herself, dipping dangerously deep into reserves she knows very well she shouldn’t touch, but she only needs a little more.

Tsunade will be disappointed with her if she doesn’t finish it.

The crow on her shoulder feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, its beak like an onyx knife next to her eyes. Sakura’s not afraid of it, precisely.

The light of her chakra has dimmed to only her fingertips, and the giant crow she’s healing speaks--

Caws. It caws at her.

It tells her to stop.

Sakura dries the sweat off her forehead again and finally lets the jutsu die. “It’s...late.” Her mouth feels numb, her thoughts are faint and indistinct and her instincts are screaming that she’s in danger. She’s been healing for much longer than half an hour.

People are talking, and she can’t see them, can only barely hear them. Sakura bows her head, trying to catch her breath, and resolutely pretends she can’t hear a thing. This is how genin disappear, she thinks, choking down fear and exhaustion. There’s three soldier pills in her belt pouch, but it’s not on her hip anymore.

Tsunade’s going to be so mad at her.

The crow’s wingtip blurs into a hand, then the illusion fades away altogether, leaving Sakura unsurprised. The missing nin she’d found earlier tilts his head when he sees her eyes focus on him. He smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling about the mask she tied onto him, and honestly he’s not...that scary.

The claw on her shoulder tightens, a man’s fingers leaving bruises in her skin. Cold sweat drips down her neck, and Sakura’s stomach is a cold, tight lump inside her. She hears the crows in the tree above, hopping closer to get a better view.

“We can’t just leave her here,” the missing nin says, and the crows caw in raucous agreement. He gets to his feet slowly, his joints cracking and clearly still stiff, but she must have managed to clear the poison for him to move at all.

The man behind her sighs, and he sounds far younger than she’d expected. “Sleep.”

His genjutsu swallows her whole.

***

Sakura wakes up on a bed, fully clothed, her hands crossed over her chest like she’s waiting for burial.

Her belt pouch is by the bed, three filtration masks next to it.

She’s in an inn on the border to Suna, and she has no idea how she got there. 

  
  



End file.
